[ej3]

Thanks for that. I hate to nit pick, but the issues surrounding the dams in the Columbia river basin are so complex and frustrating.. I honestly don't even know who or what is right at any given moment. I've torched friendships debating culling - not even sure I was right or they were. It's just horrible. Everything about it.

The dams are hugely beneficial to society. The produce energy and expedite inland commerce, and that makes us all better off. At the same time everything comes at a cost, and the costs are easily just as catastrophic.

I've seen rivers three times the size of the Columbia that have no dams. They are like the arteries of the Earth. They wend and breathe through existence itself. Heave and fall feet in hours. To see this, to be near it is to feel everything upstream. It's like looking into the night sky, but instead of making you feel small it connects you.

The Columbia is dead. I get itchy about it because we've lost that and no one even knows anymore. We long ago muted a voice that used to sing to us, but people will only consider the loss in economic terms - salmon fisheries. We can't even talk about things like humans anymore.

[i_love_music]

I appreciate your words. The passion and the way you write about nature is great. I connect with it. It does remind me that humans have become numb to the world around us. That we are just animals dependent on the ecosystem and we disturb it at our own peril.

[specialist]

> The Columbia is dead.

And you haven't even mentioned the Hanford Nuclear Reservation yet.

I volunteered at Audubon's WetNet (Wetlands Conservation Network) for most of the 90s. Their mission was to save the salmon from going extinct. So doing stuff like saving habitat (waterways, wetlands, shorelines, etc), keeping water cooler, opposing new fisheries (the final nail in the coffin for wild runs), etc.

People just don't get how bad things have become.

When GWB was selected President, I just couldn't continue.